After a tip, we went over late today and confirmed that the “School Street” signage on 45th Avenue SW in front of Madison Middle School has been damaged, a little over a month after the weekday street closure was implemented. Our photographer reports the signs are in pieces on both ends of the block, a little too deliberate-appearing to blame on, say, yesterday’s wind. We’re checking with SDOT about plans to replace it.
Same thing happened at Lafayette when they tried to implement a school street, so this isn’t surprising at all.
I was out walking yesterday during the windy part of the day and came across one of the signs blowing across the road. I moved one to the side of the road and “disassembled” one (took the sign out of the leg brackets; it just popped out and could easily be reassembled) as to not cause bodily or property harm is another gust caught it (plus, it’s mid winter break). Placing these in the roadway without adequate weights or sandbags is not ideal.
The signage has been out of order for some time, even when school was in session. I thought it was superfluous because the street in front of the school is wide and lightly traveled. The traffic blockage potentially created more safety problems in neighboring blocks than it solved, in my opinion. There are schools where traffic calming is needed more than at Madison.
Totally agree with this. I live a block away from Madison, so often use the streets surrounding. I do LOVE that there is now 4-way stops at each intersection, as there used to be cars that zoomed down Spokane without slowing down much to look for cross traffic. The stop signs seemed to have alleviated that for the most part. However, I don’t understand why the street in front of Madison needs to be “closed” during extended school hours. Five pm seems extreme. It’s a wide street with very good sightlines, and now with it closed it pushes traffic to narrower streets with cars parked on both sides; much more dangerous imo. Anyway, I hope this goes away soon, as the five 4-way stops surrounding the school seem to do a very good job at slowing traffic down.
Pretend we live in a city. Don’t block the roads, keep the city moving.
Here’s how they do School Streets in Paris: not just signage, but with actual restrictions on through traffic via infrastructure.https://www.arep.fr/en/our-projects/school-streets-initiative/
Very nice, of course in France, like most other Western countries, they have ample corporate taxes in place to have nice things.
Have you been to any actual cities? Tell me: how was the driving experience?
Time for the sign to come down permanently, that is the worst idea here at Madison. The streets around the school have too much traffic now and the cars are not slowing down on the narrow neighborhood streets where kids are walking and riding their bikes home. Madison has been there for so many years without any accidents in front of it. We now have 4 way stops on all sides of the school the cars have slowed down on 45th.
Seems to be the Seattle way they’ll add all this stuff but it doesn’t really help anything. The most effective one that I have seen is the speed camera by gatewood elementary I’ve seen a number of people getting nailed on that one
Please take down the 25 mph signs that have been on school property and near by planting strips for a year. The speed limit is 20 MPH. Twenty miles per hour. Twenty is plenty signs for neighborhood streets. Stop signaling people to slow down to a speed that is 5 MPH faster than the actual limit Slow the flock down 25 MPH is for arterials.
In Seattle, arterial are 25, residential are 20, when school activities are going on and children are present school zones are 20. https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/safety-first/vision-zero/speedlimits
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